Yesterday my sister and brother-in-law spent the day with my parents. The main purpose of the visit was to computerize the checkbook tasks. For all of their married life - nearly 58 years - my mother has been in charge of the family finances. She did a great job all of that time, managing the budget and paying all of the bills.
For the past several months, she has been having difficulty balancing the checkbook. This has been causing her much angst. My father has made noises about taking it over, but really, at 88, it seems to be beyond him, in his view. That appears to be his message although he doesn't come out and say it. So my bil, who possesses strong practical financial skills and knowledge, has generously offered to take it over (he handles the finances in that marriage). It's a steep set up curve, but he managed to get through 2 months of checks yesterday. Apparently my folks write many checks.
The bright spot here regarding my mother, is that she remembered without hesitation what all the check entries are. Many of the entries are reportedly mysterious to outsiders, noted in initials or abbreviations rather than spelled out. As bil asked Mum what these things meant, she was able to rattle everything off.
Wonderful, and interesting. While her math logic has clearly been affected by aging or disease or both, her memory for these particular things in her checkbook register has not. Amazing since she often cannot remember something said to her an hour, a day, or a month ago.
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